Financial services industry has been going through rapid changes in recent years and new technology development has played a pivotal role in the process. The current pandemic has further accelerated the pace of technology innovation and adoption, and at the same time presented new challenges as well as opportunities. Please join MIT thought leaders and startups for a series of discussions on the new trends in financial services and the driving forces behind them, including FinTech, BigTech, AI, and other disruptive technologies that will transform and reshape the future of the entire sector.
David Shrier is a globally recognized authority on technology innovation, serial entrepreneur and corporate innovator, and author. He is a Professor of Practice (AI & Innovation) with Imperial College London, and holds a secondary appointment with the University of Oxford.
David specializes in helping established organizations to act strategically to build new revenue and new markets. He has developed $9 billion of growth opportunities with C-suite executives, particularly in data-driven businesses related to the financial services sector. He has led a number of private equity and venture capital-backed companies as CEO, CFO or COO, in either interim or full-time capacities, and has cofounded four AI-enabled MIT spinouts including Esme Learning Solutions (www.EsmeLearning.com). David’s books on AI, distributed ledger and identity include Trusted Data (with Alex Pentland and Thomas Hardjono, MIT Press, 2019), Basic Blockchain (Little Brown, 2020) and the forthcoming Augmenting Your Career (Little Brown, 2021).
With over $500bn invested in fintech in the past 6 years, the venture community has vigorously supported the sector. Incumbent institutions, however, have been at times slow to adopt these new technologies. Pandemic-imposed digitization of money and work have now accelerated the pace, and created existential risk for many financial organizations from big tech and startups alike. How are institutions reinventing themselves around AI, big data, and other digital technologies? How are governments enabling this shift? What new ecosystems are arising?
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Dan is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Securrency, the leading developer of institutional-grade blockchain-based financial and regulatory technology. Former Chief Innovation Officer of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, he is the recipient of the 2014 Fierce 15 award as a top government change agent. Dan is a recognized expert in software development, artificial intelligence, process automation, cybersecurity, dynamic asset pricing, and enterprise architecture. He holds a B.S in Economics and Control Systems Engineering at the U.S Naval Academy and achieved an M.S in Nuclear Engineering from M.I.T.
Steve Kirsch is the CEO of M10 Networks which develops digital money technology for banks and central banks. He is the inventor of the optical mouse and one of the first Internet search engines, Infoseek. As the founder of 7 high tech companies, two with billion dollar market caps, Steve is now focused on modernizing payment infrastructure at M10. He has a BS/MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. The Kirsch Auditorium in the MIT Stata Center is named in his honor.